[spectre] Remind

[Louise Desrenards]

http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/Chtcheglov.htm

FORMULARY FOR A NEW URBANISM

 IVAN CHTCHEGLOV (GILLES IVAIN)

 
                                        Sire, I am from the other country

We are bored in the city, there is no longer any Temple of the Sun. Between
the legs of the women walking by, the dadaists imagined a monkey wrench and
the surrealists a crystal cup. That¹s lost. We know how to read every
promise in faces ‹ the latest stage of morphology. The poetry of the
billboards lasted twenty years. We are bored in the city, we really have to
strain to still discover mysteries on the sidewalk billboards, the latest
state of humor and poetry:

Showerbath of the Patriarchs
 Meat Cutting Machines
Notre Dame Zoo 
Sports Pharmacy 
Martyrs Provisions 
Translucent Concrete
Golden Touch Sawmill
Center for Functional Recuperation
Saint Anne Ambulance
Café Fifth Avenue 
Prolonged Volunteers Street
Family Boarding House in the Garden
Hotel of Strangers 
Wild Street 

And the swimming pool on the Street of Little Girls. And the police station
on Rendezvous Street. The medical-surgical clinic and the free placement
center on the Quai des Orfèvres. The artificial flowers on Sun Street. The
Castle Cellars Hotel, the Ocean Bar and the Coming and Going Café. The Hotel
of the Epoch.(1) 

And the strange statue of Dr. Philippe Pinel, benefactor of the insane,
fading in the last evenings of summer. Exploring Paris.

And you, forgotten, your memories ravaged by all the consternations of two
hemispheres, stranded in the Red Cellars of Pali-Kao, without music and
without geography, no longer setting out for the hacienda where the roots
think of the child and where the wine is finished off with fables from an
old almanac. That¹s all over. You¹ll never see the hacienda. It doesn¹t
exist.

The hacienda must be built.

All cities are geological. You can¹t take three steps without encountering
ghosts bearing all the prestige of their legends. We move within a closed
landscape whose landmarks constantly draw us toward the past. Certain
shifting angles, certain receding perspectives, allow us to glimpse original
conceptions of space, but this vision remains fragmentary. It must be sought
in the magical locales of fairy tales and surrealist writings: castles,
endless walls, little forgotten bars, mammoth caverns, casino mirrors.

These dated images retain a small catalyzing power, but it is almost
impossible to use them in a symbolic urbanism without rejuvenating them by
giving them a new meaning. There was a certain charm in horses born from the
sea or magical dwarves dressed in gold, but they are in no way adapted to
the demands of modern life. For we are in the twentieth century, even if few
people are aware of it. Our imaginations, haunted by the old archetypes,
have remained far behind the sophistication of the machines. The various
attempts to integrate modern science into new myths remain inadequate.
Meanwhile abstraction has invaded all the arts, contemporary architecture in
particular. Pure plasticity, inanimate and storyless, soothes the eye.
Elsewhere other fragmentary beauties can be found ‹ while the promised land
of new syntheses continually recedes into the distance. Everyone wavers
between the emotionally still-alive past and the already dead future.

We don¹t intend to prolong the mechanistic civilizations and frigid
architecture that ultimately lead to boring leisure.

We propose to invent new, changeable decors.

* * *

We will leave Monsieur Le Corbusier¹s style to him, a style suitable for
factories and hospitals, and no doubt eventually for prisons. (Doesn¹t he
already build churches?) Some sort of psychological repression dominates
this individual ‹ whose face is as ugly as his conceptions of the world ‹
such that he wants to squash people under ignoble masses of reinforced
concrete, a noble material that should rather be used to enable an aerial
articulation of space that could surpass the flamboyant Gothic style. His
cretinizing influence is immense. A Le Corbusier model is the only image
that arouses in me the idea of immediate suicide. He is destroying the last
remnants of joy. And of love, passion, freedom.

* * *

Darkness and obscurity are banished by artificial lighting, and the seasons
by air conditioning. Night and summer are losing their charm and dawn is
disappearing. The urban population think they have escaped from cosmic
reality, but there is no corresponding expansion of their dream life. The
reason is clear: dreams spring from reality and are realized in it.

The latest technological developments would make possible the individual¹s
unbroken contact with cosmic reality while eliminating its disagreeable
aspects. Stars and rain can be seen through glass ceilings. The mobile house
turns with the sun. Its sliding walls enable vegetation to invade life.
Mounted on tracks, it can go down to the sea in the morning and return to
the forest in the evening.

Architecture is the simplest means of articulating time and space, of
modulating reality and engendering dreams. It is a matter not only of
plastic articulation and modulation expressing an ephemeral beauty, but of a
modulation producing influences in accordance with the eternal spectrum of
human desires and the progress in fulfilling them.

The architecture of tomorrow will be a means of modifying present
conceptions of time and space. It will be both a means of knowledge and a
means of action. 

Architectural complexes will be modifiable. Their aspect will change totally
or partially in accordance with the will of their inhabitants.

* * *

A new architecture can express nothing less than a new civilization (it is
clear that there has been neither civilization nor architecture for
centuries, but only experiments, most of which were failures; we can speak
of Gothic architecture, but there is no Marxist or capitalist architecture,
though these two systems are revealing similar tendencies and goals).

Anyone thus has the right to ask us on what vision of civilization we are
going to found an architecture. I briefly sketch the points of departure for
a civilization:

‹ A new conception of space (a religious or nonreligious cosmogony).

‹ A new conception of time (counting from zero, various modes of temporal
development).

‹ A new conception of behaviors (moral, sociological, political, legal;
economy is only a part of the laws of behavior accepted by a civilization).

Past collectivities offered the masses an absolute truth and
incontrovertible mythical exemplars. The appearance of the notion of
relativity in the modern mind allows one to surmise the EXPERIMENTAL aspect
of the next civilization (although I¹m not satisfied with that word; I mean
that it will be more flexible, more ³playful²). (For a long time it was
believed that the Marxist countries were on this path. We now know that this
tentative followed the old normal evolution, arriving in record time at a
rigidification of its doctrines and at forms that have become ossified in
their decadence. A renewal is perhaps possible, but I will not examine this
question here.)

On the bases of this mobile civilization, architecture will, at least
initially, be a means of experimenting with a thousand ways of modifying
life, with a view to an ultimate mythic synthesis.

* * *

A mental disease has swept the planet: banalization. Everyone is hypnotized
by production and conveniences ‹ sewage systems, elevators, bathrooms,
washing machines.

This state of affairs, arising out of a struggle against poverty, has
overshot its ultimate goal ‹ the liberation of humanity from material cares
‹ and become an omnipresent obsessive image. Presented with the alternative
of love or a garbage disposal unit, young people of all countries have
chosen the garbage disposal unit. It has become essential to provoke a
complete spiritual transformation by bringing to light forgotten desires and
by creating entirely new ones. And by carrying out an intensive propaganda
in favor of these desires.

* * *

Guy Debord has already pointed out the construction of situations as being
one of the fundamental desires on which the next civilization will be
founded. This need for total creation has always been intimately associated
with the need to play  with architecture, time and space. One example will
suffice to demonstrate this ‹ a leaflet distributed in the street by the
Palais de Paris (manifestations of the collective unconscious always
correspond to the affirmations of creators):

BYGONE NEIGHBORHOODS
Grand Events
 PERIOD MUSIC
 LUMINOUS EFFECTS

PARIS BY NIGHT

C O M P L E T E L Y   A N I M A T E D

The Court of Miracles: an impressive 300-square-meter reconstruction of a
Medieval neighborhood, with rundown houses inhabited by robbers, beggars,
bawdy wenches, all subjects of the frightful KING OF THIEVES, who renders
justice from his lair.

The Tower of Nesle: The sinister Tower profiles its imposing mass against
the somber, dark-clouded sky. The Seine laps softly. A boat approaches. Two
assassins await their victim. . . .(2)

Other examples of this desire to construct situations can be found in the
past. Edgar Allan Poe and his story of the man who devoted his wealth to the
construction of landscapes [³The Domain of Arnheim²]. Or the paintings of
Claude Lorrain. Many of the latter¹s admirers are not quite sure to what to
attribute the charm of his canvases. They talk about his portrayal of light.
It does indeed have a rather mysterious quality, but that does not suffice
to explain these paintings¹ ambience of perpetual invitation to voyage. This
ambience is provoked by an unaccustomed architectural space. The palaces are
situated right on the edge of the sea, and they have ³pointless² hanging
gardens whose vegetation appears in the most unexpected places. The
incitement to drifting is provoked by the palace doors¹ proximity to the
ships.

De Chirico remains one of the most remarkable architectural precursors. He
was grappling with the problems of absences and presences in time and space.

We know that an object that is not consciously noticed at the time of a
first visit can, by its absence during subsequent visits, provoke an
indefinable impression: as a result of this sighting backward in time, the
absence of the object becomes a presence one can feel. More precisely:
although the quality of the impression generally remains indefinite, it
nevertheless varies with the nature of the removed object and the importance
accorded it by the visitor, ranging from serene joy to terror. (It is of no
particular significance that in this specific case memory is the vehicle of
these feelings; I only selected this example for its convenience.)

In De Chirico¹s paintings (during his Arcade period) an empty space creates
a richly filled time. It is easy to imagine the fantastic future
possibilities of such architecture and its influence on the masses. We can
have nothing but contempt for a century that relegates such blueprints to
its so-called museums. De Chirico could have been given free reign over
Place de la Concorde and its Obelisk, or at least commissioned to design the
gardens that ³adorn² several entrances to the capital.

This new vision of time and space, which will be the theoretical basis of
future constructions, is still imprecise and will remain so until
experimentation with patterns of behavior has taken place in cities
specifically established for this purpose, cities assembling ‹ in addition
to the facilities necessary for basic comfort and security ‹ buildings
charged with evocative power, symbolic edifices representing desires, forces
and events, past, present and to come. A rational extension of the old
religious systems, of old tales, and above all of psychoanalysis, into
architectural expression becomes more and more urgent as all the reasons for
becoming impassioned disappear.

Everyone will, so to speak, live in their own personal ³cathedrals.² There
will be rooms more conducive to dreams than any drug, and houses where one
cannot help but love. Others will be irresistibly alluring to travelers.

This project could be compared with the Chinese and Japanese gardens of
illusory perspectives [en trompe l¹oeiI] ‹ with the difference that those
gardens are not designed to be lived in all the time ‹ or with the
ridiculous labyrinth in the Jardin des Plantes, at the entry to which
(height of absurdity, Ariadne unemployed) is the sign: No playing in the
labyrinth.

This city could be envisaged in the form of an arbitrary assemblage of
castles, grottos, lakes, etc. It would be the baroque stage of urbanism
considered as a means of knowledge. But this theoretical phase is already
outdated. We know that a modern building could be constructed which would
have no resemblance to a medieval castle but which could preserve and
enhance the Castle poetic power (by the conservation of a strict minimum of
lines, the transposition of certain others, the positioning of openings, the
topographical location, etc.).

The districts of this city could correspond to the whole spectrum of diverse
feelings that one encounters by chance in everyday life.

Bizarre Quarter ‹ Happy Quarter (specially reserved for habitation)  ‹  
Noble and Tragic Quarter (for good children) ‹ Historical Quarter (museums,
schools) ‹ Useful Quarter (hospital, tool shops) ‹ Sinister Quarter, etc.
And an Astrolarium which would group plant species in accordance with the
relations they manifest with the stellar rhythm, a Planetary Garden along
the lines the astronomer Thomas wants to establish at Laaer Berg in Vienna.
Indispensable for giving the inhabitants a consciousness of the cosmic.
Perhaps also a Death Quarter, not for dying in but so as to have somewhere
to live in peace ‹ I¹m thinking here of Mexico and of a principle of cruelty
in innocence that appeals more to me every day.

The Sinister Quarter, for example, would be a good replacement for those
ill-reputed neighborhoods full of sordid dives and unsavory characters that
many peoples once possessed in their capitals: they symbolized all the evil
forces of life. The Sinister Quarter would have no need to harbor real
dangers, such as traps, dungeons or mines. It would be difficult to get
into, with a hideous decor (piercing whistles, alarm bells, sirens wailing
intermittently, grotesque sculptures, power-driven mobiles, called
Auto-Mobiles), and as poorly lit at night as it was blindingly lit during
the day by an intensive use of reflection. At the center, the ³Square of the
Appalling Mobile.² Saturation of the market with a product causes the
product¹s market value to fall: thus, as they explored the Sinister Quarter,
children would learn not to fear the anguishing occasions of life, but to be
amused by them.

The main activity of the inhabitants will be CONTINUOUS DRIFTING. The
changing of landscapes from one hour to the next will result in total
disorientation.

Couples will no longer pass their nights in the home where they live and
receive guests, which is nothing but a banal social custom. The chamber of
love will be more distant from the center of the city: it will naturally
recreate for the partners a sense of exoticism(3) in a locale less open to
light, more hidden, so as to recover the atmosphere of secrecy. The opposite
tendency, seeking a center of thought, will proceed through the same
technique.

Later, as the activities inevitably grow stale, this drifting will partially
leave the realm of direct experience for that of representation.

Note: A certain Saint-Germain-des Prés,(4) about which no one has yet
written, has been the first group functioning on a historical scale within
this ethic of drifting. This magical group spirit, which has remained
underground up till now, is the only explanation for the enormous influence
that a mere three blocks of buildings have had on the world, an influence
that others have inadequately attempted to explain on the basis of styles of
clothing and song, or even more stupidly by the neighborhood¹s supposedly
freer access to prostitution (and Pigalle?).(5)

In forthcoming books we will elucidate the coincidence and incidences of the
Saint-Germain days (Henry de Béarn¹s The New Nomadism, Guy Debord¹s
Beautiful Youth, etc.).(6) This should serve to clarify not only an
³aesthetic of behaviors² but practical means for forming new groups, and
above all a complete phenomenology of couples, encounters and duration which
mathematicians and poets will study with profit.

Finally, to those who object that a people cannot live by drifting, it is
useful to recall that in every group certain characters (priests or heroes)
are charged with representing various tendencies as specialists, in
accordance with the dual mechanism of projection and identification.
Experience demonstrates that a dérive is a good replacement for a Mass: it
is more effective in making people enter into communication with the
ensemble of energies, seducing them for the benefit of the collectivity.

The economic obstacles are only apparent. We know that the more a place is
set apart for free play, the more it influences people¹s behavior and the
greater is its force of attraction. This is demonstrated by the immense
prestige of Monaco and Las Vegas ‹ and of Reno, that caricature of free love
‹ though they are mere gambling places. Our first experimental city would
live largely off tolerated and controlled tourism. Future avant-garde
activities and productions would naturally tend to gravitate there. In a few
years it would become the intellectual capital of the world and would be
universally recognized as such.


 IVAN CHTCHEGLOV(7)
 1953

 

[TRANSLATOR¹S NOTES]

1. The humor and/or poetry of some of the signs in this list is obvious, but
in other cases it will be obscure for the non-French reader. For example,
Saint-Anne¹s is a mental asylum, and the Quai des Orfèvres is the
headquarters of the Paris police department.

2. The Court of Miracles and The Tower of Nesle: allusions to two Medieval
tales dramatized, respectively, by Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas.

3. exoticism: literally excentricité, which in French can mean either
eccentricity or outlying location.

4. Saint-Germain-des-Prés: neighborhood on the Left Bank of Paris frequented
by the lettrists in the early 1950s. It was famous as the scene of postwar
bohemianism and existentialism (Camus, Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, etc.),
but less visibly, in less trendy cafés and less reputable bars, Chtcheglov,
Debord and their friends pursued their own adventures, evoked in Debord¹s
Mémoires and in two of his films (On the Passage... and In girum...) and
recounted in detail in Jean-Michel Mension¹s The Tribe.

5. Pigalle: Parisian red light district. Chtcheglov¹s point is that the
supposed presence of prostitution had nothing to do with
Saint-Germain-des-Prés¹s cultural impact since Pigalle had far more
prostitution yet exerted no particular influence. 

6. Neither of these books were written. Henry de Béarn, another Lettrist
International member, was a close friend of Chtcheglov¹s.

7. ³Ivan Chtcheglov participated in the ventures that were at the origin of
the situationist movement, and his role in it has been irreplaceable, both
in its theoretical endeavors and in its practical activity (the dérive
experiments). In 1953, at the age of 19, he had already drafted ‹ under the
pseudonym Gilles Ivain ‹ the text entitled ³Formulary for a New Urbanism,²
which was later published in the first issue of Internationale
Situationniste. Having passed the last five years in a psychiatric clinic,
where he still is, he reestablished contact with us only long after the
formation of the SI. He is currently working on a revised edition of his
1953 writing on architecture and urbanism. The letters from which the
following lines have been excerpted were addressed to Michèle Bernstein and
Guy Debord over the last year. The plight to which Ivan Chtcheglov is being
subjected can be considered as one of modern society¹s increasingly
sophisticated methods of control over people¹s lives, a control that in
previous times was reflected in atheists being condemned to the Bastille,
for example, or political opponents to exile.² (Introductory note to
Chtcheglov¹s ³Letters from Afar,² Internationale Situationniste #9 [1964],
p. 38.)

//////////////////////////
 ³Formulaire pour un urbanisme nouveau² was written in 1953. An abridged
version appeared in Internationale Situationniste #1 (Paris, June 1958), a
translation of which was included in the Situationist International
Anthology. The present text is a translation by Ken Knabb of the complete
original version, which has just been published for the first time in France
(Écrits retrouvés, Éditions Allia, April 2006). See also the preliminary
biographical study by Jean-Marie Apostolidès and Boris Donné: Ivan
Chtcheglov, profil perdu (Allia, 2006).

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